Abstract

This report summarizes an assessment of the risks from severe accidents in five commercial nuclear power plants in the United States. These risks are measured in a number of ways, including: the estimated frequencies of core damage accidents from internally initiated accidents and externally initiated accidents for two of the plants; the performance of containment structures under severe accident loadings; the potential magnitude of radionuclide releases and offsite consequences of such accidents; and the overall risk (the product of accident frequencies and consequences). Supporting this summary report are a large number of reports written under contract to NRC that provide the detailed discussion of the methods used and results obtained in these risk studies.

This report was first published in February 1987 as a draft for public comment. Extensive peer review and public comment were received. As a result, both the underlying technical analyses and the report itself were substantially changed. A second version of the report was published in June 1989 as a draft for peer review. Two peer reviews of the second version were performed. One was sponsored by NRC; its results are published as the NRC report NUREG-1420. A second was sponsored by the American Nuclear Society (ANS); its report has also been completed and is available from the ANS. The comments by both groups were generally positive and recommended that a final version of the report be published as soon as practical and without performing any major reanalysis. With this direction, the NRC proceeded to generate this final version of the report.

Volume I of this report has three parts. Part I provides the background and objectives of the assessment and summarizes the methods used to perform the risk studies. Part II provides a summary of results obtained for each of the five plants studied. Part III provides perspectives on the results and discusses the role of this work in the larger context of the NRC staff's work.